and only had the vaguest recollection, if any, of Ralph’s improvised fooling with Ernie’s sword. Moreover, her own uncertainty at this point seemed to embarrass her very much. She blundered about from one fumbled generalization to another.
‘The solo was interesting –’
‘Wait a bit,’ Alleyn said. She gulped and blinked at him. ‘Now look here, Mrs Bünz. I’m going to put it to you that from the time the first dance ended with the mock death of the Fool until the solo began, you didn’t watch the proceedings at all. Now is that right?’
‘I was not interested –’
‘How could you know you wouldn’t be interested if you didn’t even look? Did you look, Mrs Bünz?’
She gaped at him with an expression of fear. She was elderly and frightened and he supposed that, in her mind, she associated him with monstrous figures of her past. He was filled with compunction.
Dr Otterly appeared to share Alleyn’s feeling. He walked over to her and said: ‘Don’t worry, Mrs Bünz. Really, there’s nothing to be frightened about, you know. They only want to get at the facts. Cheer up.’
His large doctor’s hand fell gently on her shoulder.
She gave a falsetto scream and shrank away from him.
‘Hallo!’ he said good-humouredly, ‘what’s all this? Nerves? Fibrositis?’
‘I – yes – yes. The cold weather.’
‘In your shoulders?’
‘Ja. Both.’
‘Mrs Bünz,’ Alleyn said, ‘will you believe me when I remind you of something I think you must already know? In England the Police Code has been most carefully framed to protect the public from any kind of bullying or overbearing behaviour on the part of investigating officers. Innocent persons have nothing to fear from us. Nothing. Do you believe that?’
It was difficult to hear what she said. She had lowered her head and spoke under her breath.
‘… because I am German. It does not matter to you that I was anti-Nazi; that I am naturalized. Because I am German, you will think I am capable. It is different for Germans in England.’
The three men raised a little chorus of protest. She listened without showing any sign of being at all impressed.
They think I am capable,’ she said, ‘of anything.’
‘You say that, don’t you, because of what Ernie Andersen shouted out when he stood last night on the dolmen?’
Mrs Bünz covered her face with her knotty little hands.
‘You remember what that was, don’t you?’ Alleyn asked.
Dr Otterly looked as if he would like to protest but caught Alleyn’s eye and said nothing.
Alleyn went on: ‘He pointed his sword at you, didn’t he, and said, “Ask her. She knows. She’s the one that did it.” Something like that, wasn’t it?’ He waited for a moment but she only rocked herself a little with her hands still over her face.
‘Why do you think he said that, Mrs Bünz?’ Alleyn asked.
In a voice so muffled that they had to strain their ears to hear her, she said something quite unexpected.
‘It is because I am a woman,’ said Mrs Bünz.
II
Try as he might, Alleyn could get no satisfactory explanation from Mrs Bünz as to what she implied by this statement or why she had made it. He asked her if she was thinking of the exclusion of women from ritual dances and she denied this with such vehemence that it was clear the question had caught her on the raw. She began to talk rapidly, excitedly and, to Mr Fox at least, embarrassingly, about the sex element in ritual dancing.
‘The man-woman!’ Mrs Bünz shouted. ‘An age-old symbol of fertility. And the Hobby, also, without a doubt. There must be the Betty to lover him and the Hobby to –’
She seemed to realize that this was not an acceptable elucidation of her earlier statement and came to a halt. Dr Otterly, who had heard all about her arrival at Copse Forge, reminded her that she had angered the Guiser in the first instance by effecting an entrance into the smithy. He asked her if she thought Ernie had some confused idea that, in doing this, she had brought ill-luck to the performance.
Mrs Bünz seized on this suggestion with feverish intensity. ‘Yes, yes,’ she cried. That no doubt was what Ernie had meant. Alleyn was unable to share her enthusiasm and felt quite certain it was assumed. She eyed him furtively. He realized, with immense distaste, that any forbearance or consideration that he might show her would probably be taken by Mrs Bünz for weakness. She had her own ideas about investigating officers.
Furtively, she shifted her shoulders under their layers of woollen clothes. She made a queer little arrested gesture as if she was about to touch them and thought better of it.
Alleyn said: ‘Your shoulders are painful, aren’t they? Why not let Dr Otterly have a look at them? I’m sure he would.’
Dr Otterly made guarded professional noises, and Mrs Bünz behaved as if Alleyn’s suggestion was tantamount to the Usual Warning. She shook her head violently, became grey-faced and speechless and seemed to contemplate a sudden break-away.
‘I won’t keep you much longer,’ Alleyn said. ‘There are only one or two more questions. This is the first. At any stage of the proceedings last night did the Hobby Horse come near you?’
At this she did get up, but slowly and with the uncoordinated movements of a much older woman. Fox looked over the top of his spectacles at the door. Alleyn and Dr Otterly rose and on a common impulse moved a little nearer to her. It occurred to Alleyn that it would really be rather a pleasant change to ask Mrs Bünz a question that did not throw her into a fever.
‘Did you make any contact at all with the Hobby?’ he insisted.
‘I think. Once. At the beginning, during his chasinks.’ Her eyes were streaming, but whether with cold or distress, it was impossible to say. ‘In his flirtinks he touched me,’ she said. ‘I think.’
‘So you have no doubt got tar on your clothes?’
‘A little on my coat. I think.’
‘Do the Hobby and Betty rehearse, I wonder.’
Dr Otterly opened his mouth and shut it again.
‘I know nothing of that,’ Mrs Bünz said.
‘Do you know where they rehearsed?’
‘Nothink. I know nothink.’
Fox, who had his eye on Dr Otterly, gave a stentorian cough, and Alleyn hurried on.
‘One more question, Mrs Bünz, and I do ask you very seriously to give me a frank answer to it. I
